The Three Faces of Ava
by ladybalin
Summary: A short character study of Ava in her three lives. Some of the blanks from the show are filled in with my own imagination of what could have happened. Please read and review.


**Avaldrima**

Avaldrima was born a princess. At her birth, noble families all across Antar sent gifts of rare metals and scents and the country rejoiced. Her family, the oldest of the Nine, would continue. Every morning, her mother brushed her hair and told her that she would marry a king someday. And Ava looked at her pretty dresses, and pretty jewels, and believed her.

At thirteen, her family arranged for her to visit the high court, where she would learn to look soft and doll-like and collect information that would help her family gain prominence and survive the eternal feuding of the Nine. Ava brushed her hair and sat politely and listened.

At fifteen, her mother told her to don a gown embossed with gold thread and costly jewels and attend the party where the new high king was to be presented. Ava smiled demurely at the young king and curtsied prettily and knew that he would be hers. All night long, she laughed when he laughed, touched his arm when she spoke, and gazed softly through her lashes at him.

At sixteen, Ava became Queen. And if the King always turned to his sister first, and his sister always looked at a point just over Ava's head, Ava knew that he was hers now and forever. And he would smile at her and hold her at night and she thought she was content.

At eighteen, the feuding had become war and her King was nearly always absent and there still was no heir. Ava still sent the things she heard to her family, but they no longer responded. On the night when the rebels overtook the palace, the King's sister turned to go to her lover and Ava smiled as she stabbed the traitor with a small steel knife and Velondra's eyes focused for the last time above Ava's head before going blank. And when the rebel guards killed Ava in turn, she sighed and vowed silently to one day regain that which she had lost.

**Ava**

When Ava broke free from her pod, the first thing she saw was Zan's face and she knew that all was as it should be. He took her hand and Velondra's and Rathgar's and said that they were complete now. Ava looked at Velondra and thought she had forgotten something, but couldn't quite remember what it was. She heard the rumble of the subway and smelled the stench of the sewer and thought that she liked the old world better.

As a child, Ava learned that she could coax money and sweets out of strangers by looking sad and innocent. When she and the others got older, they just stole for the most part. She never quite felt comfortable in her new human hybrid body; everything felt too tight or too loose and she could almost remember what things used to be like. At night, while she lay next to Zan, she dreamed of Antar sometimes. She knew that she had been Queen there and Zan her King and sometimes the color of the sky and the feel of the water came back to her. But she always awoke in the same dank subway station, listening to the rats skitter across the floor.

At fifteen, Zan took her for the first time in this life and if it wasn't quite as she remembered, she lay quietly and didn't complain. And if he walked alone at night and sometimes came back with the scent of other girls clinging to his skin, at least he always came back to her. In the dark, the world faded away until it was just the two of them and Ava felt that if she just kept pretending maybe everything would be okay.

At seventeen, Ava was alone and her memories of home had faded to fragments of a dream. She stood on the edge of a bridge and wondered which way to fall.

**Tess**

She woke up in her pod alone and felt that something was wrong. No one helped her break the skin and step into the world. She worried at the absence of others and felt her abandonment like a sore tooth. Outside the chamber, someone did come, but she didn't know him although he bowed low and greeted her as his Queen and told her she had a destiny.

When Tess was eight in human years, she tried to bring a friend home to play with, for she was tired of changing the colors of her room and sending images of birds and bees into the minds of the passers-by. But Nasedo sent her friend away and told her that humans were irrelevant. After that, they moved too often for Tess to become friends with anyone. Every day Nasedo reminded her that one day they would go home, even though she couldn't remember what home was like. At night, she dreamed sometimes of the others, the ones that Nasedo said had abandoned her, and wondered if they would understand.

When she turned thirteen, a boy kissed her for the first time. But Ava panicked and drew back because Nasedo had told her that she was destined for the Other and that she must bear him a child one day. And so as the human leaned in again and grabbed her arm, Ava turned away and her internal energy burst out from her unbidden and consumed him. Nasedo told her not to worry, as the boy was only human. One day, he said, she would be Queen, and this planet would not even be a light in the sky. And so they left, and Tess was careful to only weep at night, when Nasedo couldn't see her.

At sixteen, she finally found the others, but they were closer than siblings and she no longer fit, for it was too late. She watched Him, with Her. Every time they snuck into the back room or drove away in his car, she lurked in the dark, waiting. They didn't see her. Humans were good at ignoring things they didn't want to know about.

At eighteen, nothing had gone the way it was supposed to. She had been a wife, a queen, and a mother and failed at each in turn. And so she walked towards the military base, ready to perform the last task that she could do well. And she wondered if, in another lifetime, things would have been different.


End file.
